Escort Mission: Kuro 「ＳＴＡＧＥ ＩＩ」

The capped Kuro Squad vs. Stage II 100 Evils.

When I set out to beat a stage II 100 Evils challenge with this team, I did not expect to succeed so soon. Definitely much more involved than the last one, featuring a proper boss fight, too! Still no Attribute Enhancement.

The team is the same as last time with a couple of key changes: Ayaka's HP regen memoria was replaced with one that slightly boosts her damage and gives her extra MP when taking supereffective hits. Since there are several light types in this stage, it got decent mileage, and her Magia buffs team DEF, too, so it helps on both offense and defense. Kuro's memoria was replaced with one that buffs her DEF by a whopping 90% while at full health, alongside 20% damage resist at all times. This effectively prevents her from being one-shotted while at full health, which is vital, as there are a few big hits she's guaranteed to take during the final wave.

Since the team is mostly the same, I'll discuss stage strategy instead:
Wave 1: Yachiyo and Iroha
Yachiyo is a straight damage dealer, while Iroha rapidly charges MP, and heals the team. Her Magia heals, and can revive Yachiyo if she is down. If Iroha goes down first, Yachiyo gains major stat buffs. After some failed attempts, I determined the optimal strategy was to wear down Iroha with normal attacks before we got our first Magia, then burst down Yachiyo before quickly finishing off Iroha, lest she cast Magia again.

Wave 2: Ui and Sakurako
Sakurako is a straight damage dealer, and Ui drains the party's MP every few turns. A loss of momentum would be devastating here, so we burst down Ui as fast as possible before going after Sakurako.

Wave 3: Elisa and Melissa
Elisa instantly charges 100 MP and uses her Magia on the first turn, so we need to burst her down before she can activate it. In this case, we use the bind from Maria's connect to buy an extra turn while we finish charging the Magias we need to knock her down. Melissa isn't too dangerous on her own.

Wave 4: Tart and Riz
Tart casts ATK and DEF buffs on herself after a few turns, and is supereffective against Ayaka and Kuro, so we need to knock her down ASAP. Riz buffs with critical hits and defense pierce, but their effectiveness is greatly reduced when we've debuffed her attack into the ground, and in this case we knock her out before she can even use them.

Wave 5: Pernelle and Final Tart
The big boss! Pernelle will cast one turn of guaranteed provoke and barrier on herself every few turns, so normal discs are useless then, but our team relies mostly on Magia, and her offensive abilities are negligible, so we just ignore her until the real threat is down. Both her and Final Tart start with five turns of defense up, damage resist, and ailment resist (though Final Tart is immune to charm and bind regardless), so it is virtually impossible to kill them before those wear off.

Final Tart charges 30 MP per turn, and gives herself attack and defense buffs, as well as removing debuffs from herself when using Magia. We're relying on the massive 50% damage debuffs from our active memoria to stay alive, so the turn she uses Magia is the most dangerous, even if the Magia damage itself is weakened. If she manages to use Magia again before the previous buffs expire (as she almost does at the end here), it's curtains for us. It might have looked easy, but things can go downhill shockingly fast here, and Kuro died in the blink of an eye during at least one failed attempt. I took some calculated risks in order to win, but if the A.I. is cruel enough, they can steal your victory here even if you are mathematically likely to succeed.

Most of the difficulty remains in keeping Kuro (and now, Ayaka) alive. Our substantial heals and defensive buffs (including defense up and HP regen from the "Guardian Force" party formation we're using) combined with potent damage debuffs to cast on the enemy go a long way towards mitigating brute force. Those enemies with gimmicks that can seriously threaten us can be burst down with Magia so long as they don't show up during the first wave.

We were fortunate to encounter a Stage II 100 Evils challenge with enemies that primarily relied on brute force so soon. Unfortunately, there are very few if any Stage III challenges that don't feature enemies with horrifying skill effects. Won't stop me from trying every single one of them until we find one we can beat! Doing a stage III challenge _is_, of course, the logical next step, but since that's virtually impossible in practice (unless I start using uncapped teammates), I'm thinking of branching out and trying this against different types of challenging content, such as the challenge mode Kimochi boss rush stage. I guess we'll find out.

Thank you so much for watching, and have a great day! Kuro says hi!

Prelude - 0:00
Wave 1 - 0:25
Wave 2 - 4:21
Wave 3 - 5:49
Wave 4 - 8:12
Wave 5 (Boss Battle) - 10:45
Do it, Kuro! - 17:18
Victory Lap! - 17:48
Fin - 19:13